The omnibus of the Aurealis and Ditmar award winning quintessential cyberpunk novel and novella, delivering fast-paced, high-octane tales of resistance in a world ravaged by imperialism and late-stage capitalism.
"In a genre stuffed with facile hero narratives, [Napper] consistently chooses something else - messy humanity, grey moral tones and choices, hard-edged geopolitical truth. Raw and raging and passionate, this is cyberpunk literature with a capital fucken L." Richard Morgan, author of Altered Carbon
36 STREETS
Lin 'The Silent One' Vu is a gangster in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, living in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider.
Through grit and courage, Lin has carved a place for herself in the Hanoi underworld under the tutelage of Bao Nguyen, who is training her to fight and survive. Because on the streets there are no second chances.
Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory, an addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war. When an Englishman – one of the game's developers – comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend's murderer, Lin is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods: the mega-corporations backed by powerful regimes that seek to control her city.
Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.
GHOST OF THE NEON GOD
Jackson Nguyen is a petty crook living slim on the mean streets of Melbourne. When he crosses paths with a desperate, but wealthy, Chinese dissident, begging for his help, Jack responds in the only natural way: he steals her shoes.
And yet, despite every effort to mind his own damn business, a wild spiral into the worst kind of trouble begins – Murder, mayhem, fast cars, fast-talking, bent cops, and long straight highways into the terrible beauty of the vast Australian Outback.
In Jack's world, taking a stand against the ruling class is the shortest path to a shallow grave. But when an Earth-shattering technology falls into his hands, he must do everything he can to stop the wrong people taking it. In a world of pervasive government surveillance and oppressive corporate control, it's up to a small-time criminal to keep the spark of human rebellion alive.
